


Reminiscence

by Castastrophe



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Canon Compliant, Friendship, Gen, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 20:43:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19236742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Castastrophe/pseuds/Castastrophe
Summary: It’s the eve before the battle within the Northern Crater and Cloud’s mind is heavy with the thoughts of how things once were. Cid won’t have a bar of it.





	Reminiscence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mousieta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mousieta/gifts).



> GUESS WHO IS VERY EXCITED FOR FFVII:R? This chick. Rated T for swears because Cid. I have not dipped solidly into this fandom for so long but it was my very first and I am delighted to be venturing in once again. 
> 
> This is for my darling Jessica, as I know she has been drowning in the feels for Remake just as much as I have. 
> 
> ~ spopococ

The smell of mako is thick, acrid and heavy against his tongue when he takes a slow breath through his mouth and flexes his toes in his boots. For all of the wonders of the treatments he’d endured over the years, he can still feel a blister pressing against the heel and he shifts uncomfortably as a pebble presses to the underside of his foot. He’s restless, which he supposes can be expected, but there’s too many causes to focus on a single one, and he finds that with that - he can’t seem to focus at all. 

 

“I was once told that the burden of a heavy mind can be heavier than that of an overladen backpack,” a voice interrupts his musings, “but still holds about the same amount of shit before the straps snap.” There’s a click of a lighter and the mako acidity is drowned out briefly by the cloying scent of tobacco. “You got any fraying cotton there, kid?”

 

Cloud huffs out a soft sound of amusement as he sits back on the boulder he’s been keeping watch against and offers a small shrug. 

“No more than usual,” he responds, voice sounding too loud in the every and seemingly endless silence surrounding them. He can see the group’s campfire not too far away, but the air is unnaturally thick here. Pressing. He nods towards the cigarette dangling from his friend’s cracked lips as Cid eyes him off with his usual air of feigned nonchalance. “Those things will kill you, you know.”

 

“Ha!” The pilot scoffs, plucking the cigarette from his mouth, seemingly only to emphasise the middle finger he raises at Cloud before placing it back between his lips. “They can join the damn queue. What isn’t these days?”

_ What isn’t _ indeed. 

 

Cloud takes the opportunity to pull his boot from his foot and shake out the offending pebble, Cid keeping a watchful gaze over the looming shadows around them. It seems futile, in a way, to be keeping watch here. Even by the campfire, the others are at some level of risk. Even  _ with _ them at risk, it was comparable to focusing concern on seaweed whilst swimming into the mouth of a shark. 

 

Cloud wonders what’s occupying Sephiroth’s mind during this. Whether Sephiroth is dwelling on the confrontation to come. If any part of him can recall Cloud, recall Zack, from a time that is distinctly brighter than what Cloud has found himself in now. 

 

One of Yuffie’s distant laughs briefly pierces the blanket of silence around them, before returning to the stillness that both unsettles and somehow calms Cloud in ways he isn’t sure he wants to examine too closely. 

 

It was almost like being back in the pod again, and if only for a moment, Zack’s face is in front of him - all smiles and confident reassurance that  _ everything’s just gonna work out, Cloud _ . 

 

He swallows thickly and does what he knows best - repress - before tugging his boot back on and tightening the laces. 

“Nothing’s so much as shifted in the past hour,” Cloud comments, staring into the endless expanse of darkness before them. He knows there’s a path there - the only one they have for heading deeper into the bowels of the crater - but even with advanced sight, it’s barely distinguishable. There’s no movement, no shifting shadows, no peering from glowing eyes through the veil of darkness. 

“Sephy’s probably got ‘em on curfew,” Cid lazily lifts a shoulder in a resemblance of a shrug, taking a long pull from his cigarette and letting the smoke unfurl before them, before it also Is vanishing into the darkness. 

 

Cloud snorts. Only Cid could casually refer to the greatest challenge they’ve ever faced with a juvenile nickname and assume that monsters had a bedtime, whilst simultaneously shattering some of the tension building in Cloud’s shoulders. 

“You think he chaperones?” Cloud asks lightly  and Cid coughs around laughter as he pounds his chest and lets his mouth lift into a grin. 

“Well shit, I do now.”

They fall into companionable silence, broken only by inhales and exhales as Cid smokes, and the click and burn of his lighter as he sparks another. 

 

They spent a lot of time together on the road, but it was seldom just the two of them. Cloud had a begrudging respect for the crotchety old man and Cid seemed tolerant enough of Cloud in return, although the sentiment was never outwardly shared. Cloud can’t help but wonder why that is. 

“I appreciate you sticking around,” he offers quietly on a whim, and Cid pauses on an inhale, the moment hanging between them. “You could have - any one of you could have - left when you had the chance.”

“No skin off my back,” Cid’s gruff reply comes, as he crosses his arms over his chest and stretches his legs out before him. “Stayin’ home and waiting for that fucken rock to crash wasn’t gonna do me any favours. And Shera’d never have let me hear the end of it.”

 

Cloud doesn’t manage to hide his smile as he kicks a rock from beside his boot and feels the familiar prickle of restless anticipation skitter across the hairs on the back of his neck in a surge. He’s been feeling them with increasing regularity since they descended into this never ending abyss, and he wonders if it’s the very cells within him responding to the proximity of Sephiroth. He swallows thickly again and his smile shifts and drops with the action. 

 

“So what was big bad like pre-loco in the coco?” Cid asks, and Cloud finds it odd and yet somehow completely expected that Cid knows what’s on his mind without asking. The broader group asked questions like this sometimes, and it was still as jarring to talk about as that day in Kalm, what felt like eons ago. The Sephiroth he knew, or at least the version of Sephiroth he thought he would have a  _ chance _ to know? Trying to correlate with the one now seemed like an exercise in futility. 

 

“I didn’t know him all that well. Not as well as I’d always figured I would, anyway. But Zack…” Cloud falters, even the verbalisation of his name striking a pang in his chest. He wonders when that will stop happening - the ache for a fallen brother, for a lost friendship - but he pushes through regardless. “Zack told me all I need to know. About a lot of things. Sephiroth was one of them.” Cloud runs a hand through his hair, thick with grime and the blood of their most recent battle, and he grimaces. “Strong, guarded, a fearless leader. Zack would tell stories of his battle strengths, but then drop stories as well about the loyalty he had for his friends and his troops. At the end of the day, even after everything, Zack spoke about him like he was once a friend. Just… a guy.”

“‘Just a guy’, hey?” Cid hums, plucks the butt of his cigarette from his lips and flicks it into the gloom, a small glow of light within the void. Cloud watches it momentarily, burning brighter before beginning to fade and can’t help but think of Aerith. “He doesn’t seem like ‘just a guy’ now. Seems more like a parasite.”

 

“Not that I disagree, but enlighten me on your thoughts,” Cloud presses and Cid huffs a laugh. 

 

“Listen here, kid. If you spend your life dwelling on how everyone and everything you know  _ used _ to be, you’re gonna stop yourself from seeing what it is, and cockblock yourself from what it  _ can  _ be.” Cid pulls out his cigarette packet and seemingly considers reaching for another, before slipping it back into his coat, pointing a finger into the darkness before them and fixing his full attention on Cloud. “The Sephiroth down there? He’s not your friend. Hell, he ain’t even your friend’s friend. He ain’t the  _ planet’s  _ friend. All that sonuvabitch is doing right now is sucking the life out of everything he can stick his tendrils into. The planet, the beasties around here, your damn head - he’s plucking at all of it cause doesn’t give a solitary shit about any future that doesn’t have him smack bang in the centre of it. That’s not any of those qualities you listed before, that’s just a colossal sack of shit in a man suit. The Sephiroth that once was is long gone, and now you have this guy - planetary tapeworm. That’s how it is now. And if we cram some worming tablets down this planet’s throat and get her flushed of that prick? That future’s why I’m here and not in my damn kitchen drinking tea and listening to Shera’s bullshit.” 

 

Cid lifts his shoulder in a shrug again and pulls his gloves out of his pocket, pulling them on and tightening the Velcro straps. Cloud watches as his face softens a little, his tone losing a little of the sharpness Cloud’s become accustomed to. 

 

“Cause I wanna be able to be in my kitchen, drinking my damn tea and listening to my damn woman tell me her stories, and I wanna do that with the peace and comfort square in my mind that a giant fucken rock isn’t gonna burst through the ceiling and really fuck my day,” Cid murmurs, clapping a hand on Cloud’s shoulder and squeezing briefly. “So we’re goin down there tomorrow so I can poke a few holes in him or die trying, cause I’ll be fucked if I’m gonna cower from a parasite, and I’m gonna kick your ass if my team around me doesn’t have that same gung ho spirit you weirdos love to hold on to when you’re about to get into some dumb shit.”

 

Cloud swallows around the sudden lump in his throat, caught completely off guard by the sudden fierce sincerity in his friend’s gaze, and finds a smile. 

“Thanks, Cid.”

It sounds like such a small and feeble response to something so very huge that Cid has unfurled within him, but the pilot seems to take it for what it truly is. He squeezes Cloud’s shoulder again, before giving it a solid thwack. 

“Good. Now how about you take a breather from your existential crisis in the dark and come and have some of that moonshine shit with the gang?” Cid offers, dropping his hand from Cloud’s shoulder and turning towards the campsite without as much as a second glance behind him. “Talking feelings gives me heartburn, I need a drink or five. If beasties rockup, well… sounds like a future me problem.”

 

Cloud huffs a laugh and follows, his back to the dark - at least for now - and heads to where he can hear the laughter of his friends. The hair on the back of his neck is still prickling, but the warmth of the fire and of the drink of questionable origin that Barret shoves into his hand overrides it enough to push it aside. He raises it to Cid, who’s plopped himself beside Vincent and is already halfway through his own beverage, and the pilot tips his head toward him before tipping it back and draining the remainder. 

 

Cloud doesn’t know what’s to come tomorrow or the day after that - if there is one at all - but he thinks he’s maybe looking forward to finding out. 

 


End file.
